I opened my mouth and clamped it shut, astounded to realize that I had no clue. I hadn’t thought to ask the judge.
Lafayette said, “The last time the public defender conflicted out, a lawyer that Baylor appointed tried to bill the county a fortune for his time. But they cut him back. You should know that up front. You’ll only get paid eighty dollars an hour for in-court time, fifty dollars an hour for your out-of-court time.”
I blinked. That sounded like a fortune. I’d been wrangling small fees from clients who couldn’t afford to pay for their groceries. I started doing math to calculate how many hours I’d rack up for a jury trial.
I could pay my rent at the Ben Franklin.
Lafayette reached over to the credenza behind his chair, picked up a file, and tossed it across the desk at me. “There’s your discovery: it’s the contents of our Darrien Summers file.”
I opened the file and flipped through it. Skimming the pages, I tried to play it cool.
“Tom, what do you see as the core evidence you have against my client?”
“It’s all right there, in the sheriff’s report. Summers was found with Jewel Shaw’s body in a cabana out by the pool at the Williams County country club on the night of the Mardi Gras ball. She had thirteen stab wounds, inflicted by an instrument consistent with a butcher knife.”
When he talked about the deceased’s injuries, he rolled the words on his tongue: ssstab woundsss inflicted by an inssstrument.
“What was my client doing at the club?”
“Summers was on staff at the club—a waiter.”
I had the sheriff’s report in hand, skimming through it as fast as I could. “I don’t see anything about a murder weapon. Where is it?”
“Damn shame—they looked for it. Never found it.”
I looked up from the report and tried to read his reaction. “No murder weapon? What did he do, eat it? And no eyewitness? Your evidence is circumstantial. My client sounds like a bystander, a guy who stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Lafayette laughed at me—for the third time. “Keep digging in that file, Ruby. They found Jewel Shaw’s cell phone at the scene. And the last activity on her phone was a text message to the defendant, telling him to meet her at the cabana.”
“I don’t get it. She’s texting the waiter? What—she wants another dessert? This is totally arbitrary. What’s the motive?”
“Keep turning the pages, ma’am.”
I did. When I came upon photocopies of selfies of a blond woman and a tall black man engaged in a variety of sexual positions, I almost dropped the file.
“Oh, my Lord.”
“Yep. Looks like Miss Shaw didn’t delete her photos too often.”
Something about the name of the deceased rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Jewel Shaw,” I repeated.
Lafayette nodded. “Jewel was cut down in her prime. We’ll never know how he got rid of that knife—but he didn’t get rid of those phone pictures. And those pictures there are going to get your client the death penalty.”
The death penalty. Bile rose up in my throat again. I grabbed the file and my briefcase and made a run for the women’s restroom.
Chapter 4
I’D NEVER SEEN the inside of a jail before.
The smell hit me first: an unhappy combination of dirty feet and school cafeteria food. I dug into my briefcase, palmed a Nicorette tablet, and chewed down hard.
As the jailer led me into the inmate interview area, he pointed to a phone receiver on the wall, next to a foggy pane of security glass. “You’ll talk through that.”
“Okay,” I said, and pulled out a folding chair that faced the glass. When the jailer left, the electronic door slammed shut behind him, locking me in. I shuddered.
While I waited for Darrien Summers to appear on the other side of the cubicle, I pulled out my legal pad, turned to a fresh page, and tapped my pen on the paper in a nervous rhythm. I started to wonder whether the gum chewing would make me look like an immature kid.
He wouldn’t know I was trying to kick the Marlboro habit I’d started in high school, when I used to filch cigarettes from my mom’s purse. I quit in college; it was a habit I could ill afford. But I picked it up again in law school from my ex, Lee Greene. Somehow, his overblown confidence made the vice look genteel. Those were the bad old days.
But I was done with tobacco, and done with my false southern knight, Lee. The Nicorette was a handy panacea, but my client might think I was chawing down on a lump of bubble gum. I tore off a piece of paper from the legal pad and spat the gum onto the paper just as my client walked through the door on the other side of the glass.
The fuzzy selfies I’d seen of Darrien Summers didn’t do him justice. He was well over six feet tall, dwarfing the jailer who led him in, and his muscled biceps and forearms looked like those of a DC superhero. His hair was buzzed close to his head, enhancing his sculpted cheekbones and strong jaw. He was dressed in orange jail scrubs, his hands shackled behind him.
I waved at Summers through the glass. As soon as the jailer unlocked the cuffs and made his exit, I picked up the phone.
Darrien Summers stared at me with disbelief. I pointed at the phone receiver in my hand. “Pick up.”
Shaking his head, he dropped into his chair. Slowly, he picked up the phone on his side of the glass and held it to his ear.
“Who are you?”
Smiling, I said, “Mr. Summers, I’m Ruby Bozarth. May I call you Darrien?”
“What do you want?”
“Judge Baylor just appointed me to represent you in your criminal case. You can call me Ruby. Sir, can I call you Darrien?”
“Well, shit.”
Through the glass, I could see his eyes rove over my long hair, my face, the worn business suit. After a long silence, he spoke again. “How old are you?”
I dropped the grin. It was a fair question, and there was no point in trying to dodge it. “Twenty-six.” Hastily, as if it would boost my credibility, I added, “I’ll be twenty-seven in two months.”
Summers dropped the phone. It made a metallic whine when it hit the counter. The noise hurt my ear, and I winced.
His head rolled back on his neck, with his eyes focused on the ceiling. Then his eyes closed, and he gave a deep exhale.
Gripping the phone, I spoke loudly into the receiver. “Darrien? Mr. Summers? Pick up the phone, please.”
He ignored me. Turning sideways in his chair, he faced the blank cinder-block wall.
I shouted into the receiver. “We have got to talk. You’re going to trial in two weeks. Two weeks!”
Summers rose from the seat. Turning his back to me, he took a step to the locked door inside his cubicle and knocked on it.
My face hot, I rapped on the security glass. “Darrien, I need your help. You have to assist in your defense.” The phone was wet from the sweat in my hand.
He began to pound on the door with a closed fist. I didn’t need the phone to hear what he was saying on his side of the glass.
“Out! Get me out of here!”
The door on his side of the cubicle opened abruptly, and the short jailer’s face appeared, wearing a bemused expression. “What the hell?”
“I’m done here. I want to go back to my cell.”
As the jailer shackled his wrists, I tried again. “You need me. Come back! Talk to me.” I was ashamed to hear the whine in my voice. I beat on the glass. “I’m all you’ve got.”
Darrien Summers left the interview room without a backward look. As the door clicked shut behind him, I slammed the plastic telephone into its base. To the empty space, I announced: “I quit.”
Chapter 5
MY MAMA DIDN’T raise no quitter.
I repeated the thought like a mantra the next morning as I rose from my sofa bed at the office, showered, and brushed my teeth. I pulled on jeans and a loose sweater. I was heading back to the jail for another shot with Darrien Summers, and I figured I might as well be comfortable. My courtroom suit hadn’t impressed my new client the previous afternoon.